FLASH: History of Flash

[Brad Bechtel]

Here's a brief history of Flash.  Corrections, additions, etc. are welcomed.


FutureWave Software, Inc. was founded in January 1993 to develop and publish graphical tools and solutions for the Internet and print market with a focus on innovative, easy-to-use technology. The company's premier products were FutureSplash Animator and SmartSketch. FutureWave Software, Inc. was a privately-held corporation headquartered in San Diego, California.


The first version of FutureSplash was announced in August of 1996.  A revised version 1.1 was released, which added new scripting features, an option to disable the menu and memory management optimizations. 


FutureWave Software was acquired by Macromedia in January of 1997.  FutureSplash Animator was renamed Macromedia Flash,  and work was continued on what would become Flash 2.0.


Flash 2.0 was released in April of 1997.  Updated features included support for bitmaps and sound.

Flash 3.0 was released in March of 1998.  Updated features included a revised user interface, support for alpha channel in bitmaps, lossless compression in exporting, expanded FSCommand structure, bandwidth profiler, and probably some other things I can't remember right now.


A version of the FutureWave web site is still online at http://www.futurewave.com.au/fsindex.html if you want to see what it looked like.




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